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Story 3
Starting with
Lurks, Gathers & then Thinks
Also known as: Thomas, the ramblefrunk & Jo
After having made a deal with the Dwarfs, Thomas and Jo had left the cave, mostly empty handed, except for a pet ramblefrunk and a few gold coins the dwarf had gifted them, in return for the rest of Thomases brew that is Jos pocked held a secret the locket
Four nights ago Jo had woken both Thomas and the ramblefrunk, in panic he was throwing furniture around, pulling out drawers and ripping open pillows and mattresses while yelling
ÔÇØWhere is it! Who took it! WHERE!!!ÔÇØ
Not knowing exactly what Jo was talking about, Thomas reluctantly promised to help him find whatever he had lost the search had lead them, somehow, to the golden rose, an inn that rarely saw any customers but somehow kept the doors open any ways. Well, entering the cellar with a bit of help from the two big thugs that had followed them in explained quiet a bit
Well! Who do we have here? No! no no no no no! let me introduce myself first I am Roghal, Ruler of thieves there, thats better.. And you are?
Roghal looked down upon you. The self-proclaimed ruler of thieves seemed very happy with himself.
Thomas faced Roghal politely, took his hat off, turned it this way and that in his hands, cleared his throat and started to talk, rather softly and quite obviously intimidated. "My name is Thomas, this is Jo and we don't know this creature's name. We call it Chirpa, but it doesn't heed to that."
The ramblefrunk quietly rolled its eyes and shifted its attention from the conversation. It hated that name and it didn't fancy another run-in with this self-proclaimed ruler of the thieves and his cronies, prolonged by it's current companions' personality traits. It knew that kind more than it fancied.
It didn't like doing what it was going to do next, either, especially to Thomas who had always treated it decently, but there was only so much you could achieve by being adorable. With this lot it most certainly wouldn't do.
So it repositioned itself to a spot in the air, hovering effortlessly behind Thomas' head, at about the same height. In the blink of an eye it shot a tiny needle into Thomas' neck, that made him wince, stop in mid sentence and reach for the back of his neck with his hands.
Thomas felt a short, sharp, midnight blue triangular pain in the back of his neck and then all hell broke loose for him. The people around him, the cellar of the tavern, the crates in which some sort of wares must surely be stored started to bend, distort, twist and scream in cacophony. Yet at the same time, it was he who twisted and turned. His surroundings turned too dark to see one moment and blindingly bright the next. He thought he smelled mangos and his mouth tasted like tin and the very air itself felt like the fuzzy skin of a peach. He tried to clutch his hands with his face, but he missed because somehow one of his hands sped up to a point where he wasn't even able to see it whereas the other slowed down to a point where Thomas wasn't even sure he was capable of moving it at all, frozen in mid air. Up became down and down became sideways. It was all Thomas could do not to vomit. He heard screaming and only later on realized that it was his voice that he heard. A loud, rhythmical thrumming noise started and grew gradually louder. His face displaying signs of agony and madness, he crumpled into a humanoid spiral, collapsing on himself and finally, with a satisfying "PLORP" sound, imploded.
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Thomas re-materialized and collapsed onto the floor - which very reassuringly was down - and found himself whole, safe and sound - even of mind - albeit a little confused and dizzy.
"Yes, yes, it's bigger on the inside and no, you do NOT get to relief yourself in here. I know picking an outhouse as exterior wasn't the best choice, but I didn't have much of a choice with this backwards setting here and now the camouflage system is stuck and I can't change it any more..."
Thomas saw a man approaching him, whose voice he must have just heard.
"Oh, you didn't come in through the door it seems. I guess Spitlout must have sent you here then, probably protecting you from immanent death... or worse." The man, dressed in very strange brown clothing, two red and white polka dotted triangles attached to his throat and something that looked like an upturned red bucket made of cloth on his head, with a black tussle sprouting from it reached for Thomas' neck and yanked the needle from it in a way that made it clear to Thomas that he knew what he was looking for. "Ah yes, there we go. Nasty little bugger, with barbed hooks and everything. Don't worry, the distortion sickness will wear off monetarily. Good job on not puking so far."
The man patted Thomas onto his back approvingly.
"I'm the cleric, by the way. Nice to meet you."
"I'm Thomas" Thomas replied a little puzzled. If anything, the man seemed more like a wizard to him. Or at least some sort of magician. "The cleric who?"
"Oh, no, not going through that again. Ask something else."
"Erm... where are we?" Thomas complied, feeling more and more confused. The room was very dimly lit, and everywhere there were crystals, some of them glowing, some of them blinking, most of them humming softly. There was a strange contraption in the centre of the room, which the strange man currently was looking at with a wrinkled forehead.
"Ah, now that is a tricky one. You see, one of the side effects of me being called here by the ramblefrunk's homing, retrieve and rescue beacon, is that the landing afterwards is very sloppy. I could tell you very precisely WHEN we are, though. Say, have you ever ridden on a dinosaur's back? It's brilliant I tell you. You just have to try it. Allons-y!"
"A dyno sore? What's that?" The strange man paid no heed to the question, but instead grabbed Thomas by the hand, pulled him to his feet and exited with him through a door into a lush, green jungle.
But that is a story for another day.
The ramblefrunk, fully aware of how this looked for the humanoids, paused for maximum effect, allowing the sheer horror of how the ramblefrunk did this to one of its own companions made him disappear or worse and the realization that any of them might be next sink in with each of the thieves present, most of all, their ruler.
Then it flapped lazily onto Jo's head, extended the four trunk-limbs to hold onto him making it look kind of like it could be sucking out or controlling his brains - whichever amount of them there was to start with - straightened up to full height and spread its ear-wings menacingly. It moved Jo's unresisting head slightly, to keep the ruler of thieves guessing whether this was the ramblefrunk's doing, Jo's or something they were only capable of jointly and projected a boomingly loud deep and innately commanding voice telepathically into Roghal's mind, making it bounce back and forth within it like an echo. Most interestingly, this could be heard in every of the thieves' king underlings minds as well, even the ones who weren't here. The ramblefrunk might have to investigate that later on, but first things first.
"Now that you have seen what we can do, you don't want to pester us any further. You want to give us the locket and anything else we might ask from you and then send us on our merry way, never to molest us with your - or your associates' - presence ever again."
It wasn't a question. It wasn't even a suggestion. It was a fact.
While "talking", it made a small, kind of wave-y gesture with one of its paws, smirking. The gesture itself did absolutely nothing, but from experience, whenever it pulled a stunt like this, it made the humanoids pee themselves with willingness to comply. And that way, onlookers were tricked into thinking that it was the gesture that made the ruler of the thieves obey. Little things like that amused the ramblefrunk and it felt like it deserved a little laugh after a so far rather bland and boring and altogether not too nice a day.
